Kaiser Ng, the finance chief at Binance, is stepping down just days after the exchange lost $6.3 billion of its users’ crypto to hackers. Binance describes the move as a planned handover, not a response to the breach.
Co-CEO Yi He said Ng wants to start something new after five-plus years with the company, and that the handover has been in preparation for about six months, which would predate the theft.
The timing is awkward all the same. Binance froze withdrawals for several days after the breach. Withdrawals were still allowed again only after that pause, and in the first hours customers moved out $3.6 billion more than they put in. The exchange has promised that users will not carry the loss, saying the cost of the theft is its own to absorb.
That promise puts the finance chief’s seat under particular scrutiny. Binance said it had replaced 95% of the stolen funds when it reopened some withdrawals, and the FBI has pointed at North Korea for the theft, naming a group called TraderTraitor.
How the attackers got in was the subject of Binance’s own account: a search ad and a fake job interview, not a flaw in the exchange’s code. For a finance chief that is a reputational problem more than a technical one, since the exchange now has to show customers it can hold their money safely while it repays what was lost.
Neither Binance nor Ng has said who will take over as CFO. The company also has not said how the investigation is progressing beyond what the FBI has already stated.
